NZ top-tier law firm launches tech & innovation business

Zeren delivers legal documentation and advice in new ways. This reduces cost, saves time and enables legal teams and other business users to “self-serve” legal advice through the cloud.

“Technology is changing the delivery of legal and other business services globally, and this – along with globalisation and competition – means lawyers’ time is transforming into legal products and online services,” says Chapman Tripp technology partner, and head of Zeren, Bruce McClintock.

“Zeren combines Chapman Tripp’s unique legal, client and business knowledge with technology, meaning legal and quality assurance is built in. Clients get a Chapman Tripp-quality document, without having to go through a Chapman Tripp lawyer every time.”

Clients automatically generate legal documents by filling out dynamic, web-based forms created from their existing legal and business templates, or from Chapman Tripp’s. This process includes workflows to trigger internal reviews and approvals or to connect with external stakeholders. Clients can store their documents, as well as capture the data they contain, to improve activities such as contract management, risk management and other business processes.

This means businesses can produce and access various legal documents – from legal contracts and letters to other advice – faster, with greater accuracy and reduced cost. This frees up time for higher value and strategic work, and reduces reliance on in-house legal teams or external firms for lower value tasks.

“As an example, one of our banking clients has used Zeren to automate its customer facing lending variation letters. With a refreshed and newly automated template, they now generate thousands of letters a month, which are more customer-friendly and better set up for legal compliance than ever before” says Tim Sherman, projects lead for Zeren and senior associate* at Chapman Tripp.

Zeren also gives clients access to artificial intelligence and machine learning technology to speed up large scale document reviews, such as M&A due diligence. Zeren and Chapman Tripp’s AI service, Luminance clusters and classifies data in a way that project teams can immediately prioritise their review. The more the technology is used, the more effective it becomes, greatly increasing the efficiency of due diligence. Luminance is also used by Gilbert +Tobin and Corrs Chambers Westgarth in Australia, along with international firms such as Wong Partnership and Slaughter and May.

*Tim will become a Chapman Tripp partner on 1 December 2017, subject to the usual NZ Law Society approval process.